


When All Is Already Lost

by msgeniuspa



Series: Tales From The Forlorn Road [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Anvil of the Void quest spoilers, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragon Age: Origins Spoilers, Horror, including two counts of canonical minor character suicide, multiple counts of canonical minor character death, some non-canon pda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7856515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msgeniuspa/pseuds/msgeniuspa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rescue in the Deep Roads quickly takes a horrifying turn for the worse....  (First time writing horror, critique and constructive criticism are encouraged and appreciated!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When All Is Already Lost

**Author's Note:**

> This quest fucked me up emotionally, so now I'm inflicting it upon you. This is actually mostly canon, but I've added some expository dialogue for the sake of the narrative and tweaked some canon dialogue because I didn't feel any of the options were in-character for my Warden. Also, constructive criticism is always welcome. If there are two things I'm not experienced at writing, it's horror and combat.

The lights were on in Bownammar.  They weren't alone.  Lornwen tested the tension of her bowstring, her thumb running over the fletching of the nocked arrow, as her elven ears strained for any noise of darkspawn.  It was difficult over the noise Oghren was making, however.  The dwarf was the only one in the party wearing a full suit of metal armor, and even Wynne, who wasn't particularly stealthy, was making less noise than him.  Every step that Oghren took clanged loudly, echoing through the stone chambers.  Every footfall made Lornwen grit her teeth tighter and tighter.  She had been underground for too long.  As beautiful as she had found Orzammar and the dwarven architecture when they'd first arrived, they'd been down here for nearly a week, and their expedition into the Deep Roads had stretched on for nearly three days already.  Lornwen was exhausted, and she desperately missed the sunshine and trees and grass of the surface, and swore to the gods, if Oghren clanged one more time-

"If there's one thing I've learned from my time with the Crows," Zevran said lightly, trying to break the tension, "it's that no body means no death.  So from what we've seen so far, there's no evidence to say that Branka is not still alive."

"The darkspawn eat living flesh," Lornwen snapped before she could stop herself.  "Branka and the others have been down here for nearly two years, there wouldn't be anything left to find."

Stinging dust and pebbles bit at the backs of Lornwen's legs as Oghren shattered a piece of rubble with his boot.  Snarling, Lornwen whirled on him, only to find herself faced with Wynne's torso where the older woman had already positioned herself between them.  She fixed Lornwen with a look, a silent chastisement for not being more tactful but tempered with that ever infuriating understanding.  And a reminder that Lornwen wasn't the only one feeling tired and agitated.  
Lornwen wanted to scream, but instead she managed a tight, "I'm sorry.  Zevran, you're right, there would be some kind of sign of them.  We haven't found it, yet, so she or it must be ahead."

They adjusted their marching order, Zevran and Wynne placing themselves between Lornwen and Oghren as they climbed through a ruined wall into a rough tunnel.  There were signs of passage on the floor, but it had been quite some time since anything had passed through.  But still, the stench of darkspawn hung heavy in the air.

_"First day, they come and catch everyone...."_

It was faint, barely a whisper.  Lornwen froze, crouching as she held out an arm to stop the others.  "Who else heard that?  That voice?" she whispered.

The others only shook their heads blankly, but she knew she had heard something.  She knew.  Right?  Looking over Oghren's armor and solid stance, she signaled to Wynne for the two of them to hang back and then to Zevran to scout forward with her.

As they padded silently up the winding corridor, she felt the warmth of his face next to her own.  "What did you hear, my dear?" he breathed into her ear.

"A voice ahead, not darkspawn.  It sounded like a person," she answered, equally quietly.

_"Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat...."_

"Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat," Lornwen repeated, her blood running cold.

Zevran frowned.  "I still cannot hear it."

Lornwen's pace quickened.  It had sounded like they were drawing closer to the distant voice.

_"Third day, the men are all gnawed on again...."_

Anxiously, she glanced back to where they had left Oghren and Wynne.  Splitting up may have been a bad idea.

As if reading her mind, Zevran gently pressed his shoulder to hers.  "Wynne is indomitable, and we will hear the dwarf's yelling if trouble should be so unlucky as to find them."

"I just have such a bad feeling about this," Lornwen said, trying not to let her voice shake.  But she steeled herself and turned back to the path.

_"Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate...."_

Now Zevran paused.  "Okay, that one I heard.  Are we sure we should not have the other two?"

_"Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn...."_

Lornwen shook her head.  "Oghren can't move quietly enough.  It's not darkspawn, I can feel it.  We'll get them once we find out what it is."

_"Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams...."_

Zevran drew his blades as they crept forward.  "If only there was another way around...."

_"Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew...."_

The tunnel opened into another paved chamber, still part of the Bownammar catacombs, judging by the sarcophagi.  But all around was darkspawn filth and fleshy sacs Lornwen had never seen before.

_"Eighth day, we hated as she is violated...."_

Zevran positioned himself ahead of her.  The voice was definitely coming from towards the end of the hall.

_"Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin...."_

Just on the other side of the door...

_"Now she does feast, as she's become the beast...."_

The room was large but crowded with the fleshy growths.  A dwarf woman was crouched just a few feet away, her back to the door.  It was clear she was tearing open the sacs and foraging for food within.  "Now you lay and wait, for their screams will haunt you in your dreams," she said around a mouthful of meat.

Lornwen still felt a knot of dread in the pit of her stomach, but something told her that this woman wasn't a threat.  "Go get the others," she instructed Zevran lowering her bow.  "We may be about to learn where Branka is."

"Be careful, my dear," Zevran countered, placing a kiss on her forehead, then he was gone back down the way they'd came.  Lornwen placed her bow back on her back and slowly made her way towards the woman who was still muttering the strange poem.

"First day, they come and catch everyone.  Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat.  Third day, the men are all gnawed on again.  Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate.  Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn.  Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams.  Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew.  Eighth day, we hated as she is violated.  Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin.  Now she does feast, as she's become the beast.  Now you lay and wait, for their screams will haunt you in your dreams."

During this, Lornwen had heard the others approach, and now Oghren spoke up.  "Looks like cousin Hespith," he said, his voice low and bitter.  Lornwen remembered hearing a rumor that Branka had left Oghren for his cousin, but she hadn't felt comfortable asking him about it.  She still didn't.

She approached the woman, circling around to in front of her.  "What is this?" the dwarf puzzled looking up.  "An elf?  Exotic and impossible."  She scowled and went back to digging in the sac.  "Feeding time brings only kin and clan.  I am cruel to myself.  You are a dream of strangers' faces and open doors."

Kneeling, Lornwen gently took Hespith's face in her hands and tilted her head back up to get a better look at her.  Her skin was burning up, and her eyes were clouded - Lornwen wondered how she saw anything, at all.  Dark blotches covered her face, extending down beneath her collar and out across her hands from under her sleeves.

"First day, they come and catch everyone," she began repeating again.

"Is this darkspawn corruption?" Lornwen asked Wynne.  "It looks... different."

"Corruption!" Hespith crowed, jerking away.  "The men did that!  Their wounds festered and their minds left.  They are like dogs, marched ahead, the first to die.  Not us.  Not me.  Not Laryn.  We are not cut.  We are fed.  Friends and flesh and blood and bile and... and...."  
She turned away and hung her head in shame.  "All I could do was wish Laryn went first.  I wished it upon her so that I would be spared.  But I had to watch.  I had to see the change.  How do you endure that?  How did Branka endure?"

"Are you from Branka's house?" Lornwen prompted.

Hespith snarled, but fear flashed in her milky eyes.  "D-do not talk of Branka, of what she did.  Ancestors preserve us, forgive me.  I was her captain, and I didn't stop her.  Her lover, and I could not turn her.  Forgive her... but no, she cannot be forgiven.  Not for what she did.  Not for what she has become."

The dread grew in Lornwen's core, and she reached out and grabbed Hespith's arm urgently.  "What did she do, Hespith?  What did Branka do?"

Hespith cried and writhed.  "I will not speak of her!  Of what she did, of what we have become!  I will not turn!"  She managed to wriggle free of Lornwen's grasp and sprinted off down the room.  "I will not become what I have seen!  Not Laryn!  Not Branka!"

"Wait, come back!" Lornwen cried, scrambling up on the slick floor and chasing after her.

Behind her she heard Zevran, "Lornwen, stop!  Ah, wait!"  And the others followed.

She wasn't sure how Hespith had vanished so quickly with only one path leading away, but she didn't have time to worry about that when she rounded a corner and skidded to a halt in front of... well, she wasn't sure what.  It was darkspawn, backed against a tall crop of rocks, but it was easily fifteen feet tall and massive, sagging heaving breasts stretching out its purple skin and cascading down to where it seemed to simply pool on the floor.  It roared, and tentacles shot up from the ground around it and lashed out at them.

"Zevran, Oghren, beat down these tentacles!" Lornwen barked as she dove to the side and drew her bow.  "Wynne, you and I are focused on it."  She let fly an arrow, and though it certainly affected the creature, it seemed to barely pierce its fat.  Wynne's magic seemed to be much more effective, and Lornwen adjusted to be harassing.  Shooting arrows at its head, shoulders, at its hands which tried to swipe when Oghren or Zevran strayed too close.

One by one the tentacles fell, but just as there was one left, the creature let out what seemed to be a laugh as three darkspawn crawled out from beneath her, wriggling out from her folds covered in goo and charging Lornwen.  "Stay on her, Oghren," Lornwen called firmly as she dropped the first with a well placed arrow.  "Zevran, to me!"  The second didn't go down as easily even after two, three arrows.  She tried to make room, but her back hit the stone wall hard.  She reached for her own blades, the darkspawn bearing down on her.  "Zevran!"

Just before it reached her, it suddenly cried out and fell where it was hamstringed, Zevran's sword bursting through its neck from behind.  "You called, my dear?" he smirked, leveraging himself on the corpse to lean forward and give her a playful peck on the lips.

Behind him, she saw the third darkspawn's crumpled form, its back rent open.  And beyond that, the broodmother's slumped corpse, still upright, even in death.  "Days ago, it seems," she teased back, her fading adrenaline leaving her briefly giddy.  But her smile faded as she approached the creature.  "So was this Laryn...?" she wondered, trying to find a trace of what once was in the thing's slack face.

"That's where they come from," Hespith said dully, emerging from behind a rock above the creature.  "That's why they hate us... that's why they need us.  That's why they take us... that's why they feed us."

"Broodmothers aren't born," Lornwen realized.  "They're all created from corrupted women."

Hespith's face hardened.  "But the true abomination is not that it occurred, but that it was allowed.  Branka... my love...."

Wynne stepped forward.  "Come down from there, Hespith," she implored pityingly.  "Let us help you."

"The Stone has punished me, dream-friend," she said ruefully.  "I am dying of something worse than death.  Betrayal."  For a moment, a small smile seemed to come over her face, then she went limp and fell backwards out of sight.

"Cousin!" Oghren yelled scrambling up the rocks after her.

Lornwen was right behind, catching him by the back of his armor before he went accidentally careening over the edge that Hespith had, but not soon enough to pull him away before they saw Hespith hit the river of lava far below.  If she screamed, it was not heard, but both she and Oghren watch in fixed horror as a small burst of flame erupted and engulfed her.

"We have to keep going," Lornwen finally said, her voice small.  "We have to find Branka."

They slid back down the stones, avoiding the broodmother's corpse.  There was only one tunnel that lead on, but as they started toward it, Zevran turned back.  "If this was Laryn, but Branka is the 'true abomination', just what has she become...?"

They walked in silence for what seemed an age.  The pit in Lornwen's stomach grew heavier with each step, and moment by moment, she dreaded what she was going to find at the end of this tunnel.  Finally it opened up to a cavern, the floor set with dwarven tents and fire pits.  Just as Lornwen's heart lifted, however, controlled charges blasted the stone behind them, sealing the way.

"What was that?" Oghren barked, whirling around.

"Let me be blunt with you," a woman called from above them.  "After all this time, my tolerance for social graces is fairly limited.  That doesn't bother you, I hope."  There on the ridge stood a dwarf, her face stony but her eyes fiery.  She spoke with a haughty authority that demanded respect despite her own refusal to give it.

But Oghren's face cracked into the first grin Lornwen had seen from him.  "Shave my back and call me an elf!" he cheered.  "Branka?  By the Stone, I barely recognized you!"

She regarded him coldly.  "Oghren.  It figures you'd eventually find you way here.  Hopefully you can find your way back more easily."  Her heavy gaze fell on Lornwen.  "And how shall I address you?  Hired sword of the latest lordling to come looking for me?  Or just the only one who didn't mind Oghren's ale-breath?"

"Be respectful, woman!" Oghren argued.  "You're talking to a Grey Warden!"

Branka was unfazed.  "Ah, so an important errand boy, then.  I suppose something serious has happened.  Is Endrin dead?  That seems most likely.  He was on the old and wheezy side."

Lornwen's hackles raised, but she guarded her words.  "He is dead, yes, and the Assembly is deadlocked.

"Then what is your involvement in this?" Branka scoffed.  "Why would a surfacer be interested in dwarven politics?"  She exaggerated deep thought as she mocked, "You must have a patron.  A highly-placed patron.  And they must want something in particular.  Now, what might that be?"  Her face twisted into a sneer and she dropped the pretense.  "I don't care if the Assembly puts a drunken monkey on the throne.  Because our protector, our great invention, the thing that once made our armies the envy of the world, is lost to the very darkspawn it should be fighting.  The Anvil of the Void.  The means by which the ancients forged their army of golems and held off the first archdemon ever to rise.  It's here.  So close I can taste it."  Her words trailed off as she looked down another tunnel, her brow furrowing.

Glancing down the tunnel - there were definitely moving shapes down that way - then back to Branka, Lornwen said carefully, "Sounds like you could use some help."

"And you assume after all my efforts," Branka snapped, "you'll be able to waltz in and seize the Anvil without a hitch?  How typically arrogant.  The Anvil lies on the other side of a gauntlet of traps designed by Caridin himself.  My people and I have given body and soul to unlocking its secrets."

Lornwen glanced around the camp again.  There were signs of a struggle, but no dwarf bodies.

"That's what's important," Branka continued, working herself up into a frenzy of rhetoric.  "This has lasting meaning.  If I succeed, the dwarven people benefit.  Kings, politics... all that is transitory.  I've given up everything and would sacrifice  _anything_ to get the Anvil of the Void."

"Does that include Hespith and the others of your house?" Lornwen asked, her growing revulsion slipping into her voice.

"Enough questions!" Branka yelled.  "If you wish me to get involved with this imbecilic election, I must first have the Anvil.  There is only one way out, Warden.  Forward.  Through Caridin's maze and out to where the Anvil waits."

"What has this place done to you!?" Oghren said, aghast.  "I remember marrying a girl you could talk to for one minute and see her brilliance."

"I am your Paragon," Branka said icily, finally.

A stirring in the tunnel beyond snatched Lornwen's attention away.  A few darkspawn had broken off from the group and were charging towards them.  "Just a few of them, we can handle this," Lornwen said to the party quickly drawing her bow and striking the nearest one.

"I needed people to test Caridin's traps," Branka was saying from up on the ridge behind them.  Some of her words were lost amid the snarling of the darkspawn, but a phrase here and there made it through.  "I sent them in."

Lornwen and Wynne felled two of the darkspawn before they reached the party, and Zevran and Oghren braced for the third, but it ran straight past them, foaming and flailing as it clawed at the wall beneath Branka.  "They don't care about us, they want her," Wynne realized aloud.

"Then let's use that to our advantage," Lornwen said, plunging her sword into the darkspawn's back.  "Draw them out one by one, let them run past us here, then hit them from behind."

Branka seemed to no longer notice what was beneath her and continued rambling.  "...they tried to leave me, even my Hespith..."  
Lornwen turned her bow back to the tunnel, sniping at darkspawn just on the edge of her range.  If she fired quickly enough, she could drop them at range without bringing the party into melee combat.

"Most of them were dying of the taint already.... ...transforming.  I knew what they would become."

 _Wait, what?_   Lornwen froze at Branka's words.  Was she saying what Lornwen thought she was saying?

"There would be an endless supply, fresh darkspawn to test the traps!  They could still serve me...!"

Lornwen's hearing began to swim, and her limbs felt icy.  There were two ogres charging out of the tunnel, but she couldn't hold her bow steady.

"It was the only way!"

 _The only way...._   With a steadying breath, Lornwen drew back her arrow and let it fly straight one ogre's heart.

"You have no idea how they carried on, holding my hand and begging to die.  ...they had no right to fight me."

At last, the second ogre went down, and the tunnel was clear.  Lornwen fell to her knees as the pieces clicked into place.  This was what Branka had become.  It wasn't just the darkspawn who had overrun and corrupted her house, it was Branka herself.  When her people had threatened to leave, she'd had the men infected with the taint and then fed to the women to create the broodmothers.  She'd destroyed her own house, horribly violated her own people, to create 'endless' darkspawn.  And for what?  An anvil of legend?

Lornwen heaved, throwing up her meager rations onto the ground. She felt Zevran's hand on her back steadying her as she heaved and heaved.  Even after her stomach was empty she still convulsed, as if she were trying to throw back up the very knowledge.

"There's something about this place," Branka observed aloofly, as if documenting an experiment that's results she did not yet understand.  "It makes people despair."  And then she was gone.

Zevran pressed a waterskin into Lornwen's hand.  "Have some water, my dear.  As you have said, we have to keep going."

The water felt like daggers in her throat, but still she forced down just enough that she could wash the taste from her mouth.  "Thank you," she rasped, using his arm to pull herself to standing.  She looked back at the rocks that had fallen when they'd first entered and felt hate replacing the horror within her.  The next time she saw Branka, the bitch was going to get what was coming to her.

The gauntlet was shorter than Lornwen had thought it would be, compared to the excursion so far.  Or maybe she was just beginning to shut down under the exhaustion.  She could still see Hespith's clouded eyes, Laryn's bloated and corrupted face.  And as they collected themselves after beating the spirit anvil, she could see it in the others, too.  Zevran's playfulness was falling away from his eyes.  Wynne groaned as she tucked her staff away, her joints bending not quite as easily.  Oghren was muttering to himself bitterly, but Lornwen was pretty sure she heard "Branka" and "too long".

"Come on," she said, trying to summon more conviction in her voice but not quite managing.  "We're almost to the end."

The tunnel opened out on a massive cavern.  On a rut of rock over a cliff in the distance, Lornwen could just make out a glowing object that had to be the Anvil, but before them were several stone golems.  The party froze, reaching for their weapons, but the golems shuffled back defensively.

One stepped forward, a massive steel golem appearing like a suit of armor brought to life.  "My name is Caridin," he said in a voice like thunder, holding out a hand in a gesture of peace.  "Once, longer ago than I care to think, I was a Paragon to the dwarves of Orzammar.  If you seek the Anvil, then you must care about my story, or be doomed to relive it."

Lornwen stepped forward to meet him.  "Caridin? As in  _the_ Caridin?  Of Caridin's Cross?"  She was so tired, this must be a hallucination, two Paragons living in the Deep Roads.  But a small cold part of her was already calculating.  Caridin was the creator of the Anvil and a Paragon.  If his story condemned Branka, then Lornwen could thwart Branka's sick scheme and still get the support she needed to end the election, conscience clear.  Well, mostly clear.

Caridin nodded.  "Though I made many things in my time, I rose to fame and earned my status based on a single item: the Anvil of the Void.  It allowed me to forge a man of steel or stone, as flexible and clever as any soldier.  As an army, they were invincible.  But I told no one the cost.  No mere smith, however skilled has the power to create life.  To make my golems live, I had to take their lives from elsewhere."

 _It was the only way!_   Branka's words echoed in Lornwen's memory.  She had already destroyed her own kin in search of the Anvil.  With it, Lornwen knew that she would have the means and the drive to destroy all of Orzammar and perhaps even beyond.  Her words were hollow as she asked a question to which she already knew the answer, "A dire shortcut.  Was it worth it?"

"So said my king.  I had only intended to use volunteers, but he was not satisfied... and soon a river of blood flowed out of this place.  Finally, it was too much.  I refused.  And so Valtor had me put on the Anvil next."

"So you sealed it away."  Dread filled Lornwen's voice, history would absolutely repeat itself if Branka got the Anvil.  "Orzammar searches for it."

"No!  I entombed myself here to find a way to destroy the Anvil!  It must not be used again!"

"No!" Branka's voice rang out behind them as she rushed the room.  "The Anvil is mine!  No one will take it from me!"

Caridin broadened, his heavy feet planting firmly in the stone.  "You!  Please," he pleaded to Lornwen, "help me destroy the Anvil!  Do not let it enslave more souls than it already has!"

Lornwen nodded to him.  "I'm going to help you.  But you were a Paragon, I need your support in the election of a new king."

"Don't listen!" Branka spat.  "He's been trapped here for a thousand years, stewing in his own madness.  Help me claim the Anvil, and you will have an army like you've never seen!"

Oghren stepped towards her.  "Branka, you mad, bleeding nug-tail.  Does this thing mean so much to you that you can't even see what you've lost to get it?"

She stepped back in disgust.  "Look around.  Is this what our empire should look like?  A crumbling tunnel filled with darkspawn spume?  The Anvil will let us take back our glory!"

Lornwen placed herself between Branka and the Anvil.  "The Anvil enslaves living souls!  It must be destroyed."

"Living souls suffer all the time," Zevran mused.  However he caught the flash in Lornwen's eye as she turned on him, and put up his hands defensively.  "Peasants working the land are trapped," he explained, "but we do not go about destroying farmland, do we?  It just seems a waste to destroy the Anvil, given what it could do."

"And how would you like to become a golem?" Lornwen asked coldly, raising an eyebrow.

He laughed nervously.  "Now, let's not be unreasonable.  You wouldn't do _that_ , surely."

"Wouldn't I?"  Lornwen locked eyes with Branka.  "If I cared only for power?  If 'it was the only way'?"  Her glare narrowed as Branka's face twisted into a snarl.

"All right, all right," Zevran admitted.  "Perhaps destroying it is a good idea."

Lornwen's hand twitched towards her bow.

"Thank you, stranger," Caridin said behind her.  "Your compassion shames me."

"Bah!" Branka yelled.  "You are not the only master smith here, Caridin!"  From her belt she drew a control rod and raised it high above her head.  "Golems, obey me!  Attack!"

In a flash, Lornwen drew her bow and loosed an arrow directly into Branka's shoulder.  "Hold her off!" she shouted to the party, turning to sprint towards the Anvil.  If she could destroy it now then at least only their lives would be at stake in this fight.  Right as she reached the foot of the bridge, though, a wall of fire erupted in front of her, blocking the way.

"I will not be denied!" Branka screamed.

Lornwen whirled to face her and saw her hand plunged into one of the lyrium veins scattered around the field.  That wasn't supposed to be possible, but she would worry about the mechanics later.  "Wynne!" Lornwen called over the sounds of steel on stone.  "Use the lyrium before Branka can!"

Branka smirked, and turned towards the human.  "As if I would let- augh!"

Lornwen pinned her foot with a well placed arrow, but a woman as strong as Branka wouldn't be held long, she just needed to be held long enough.  "I won't let you kill anyone else!" Lornwen declared, firing arrow after arrow as quickly as she could, forcing Branka to do little more than block with her shield.  Behind her, another golem fell to Oghren's axe.

"Then you'll be the first on the Anvil!" she roared.

"I think not," Zevran smirked, materializing behind her and slipping both blades between the plates of her armor into her rib cage.

Branka screamed, but she reached for the lyrium again with one hand, and with her shield in the other, bashed Zevran harder than Lornwen had ever seen, sending him crumpling to the stone.

"Zevran!" Lornwen cried in anguish.  Her vision went red.  Anvil and dwarves and Blight be damned, this ended here.  Branka charged her as she drew back an arrow, but Lornwen held it, until just the moment when her shot lined up.  "Die," she whispered as she released, and as if in slow motion, she watched the arrow launch forward directly towards it mark, watched Branka's face shift from rage to realization to terror just before the arrow entered her left eye and continued through her head, watched as she fell heavily to the stone, watched as the remaining golems behind her immediately gave up the fight and as Oghren glanced about confused before seeing them, his expression falling, crushed.

And then it all came rushing back to speed.  "Zevran," Lornwen choked, racing over to him and falling to her knees at his side.  "Wynne!  Zevran's down!"  Quickly, she felt for a pulse, and at the steady beat beneath her fingers, tears welled in her eyes and relieved, exhausted laughter bubbled up in her throat as she pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"Ohhh," he groaned, stirring.  "Is it over already?  I wanted a chance to get back at her for hitting me."

"Easy there," Wynne smiled, kneeling on his other side to examine him.  "Though if you're already joking, I think you're going to be just fine."

Wiping her eyes, Lornwen stood and looked about for Caridin.  He stood back near where Oghren was bent over Branka's body, and Lornwen braced herself a moment before joining them.

"Another life lost because of my invention," Caridin said wearily.  "I wish no mention of it had made it into history."

"Yeah, you ain't kidding," Oghren agreed, his voice cracked.  "Stupid woman!"  Lornwen flinched, thinking the comment was directed at her.  But when he looked up with no animosity in his eyes, she realized it was Branka he'd cursed.  "I always knew the Anvil would kill her."

Lornwen reached for his shoulder, but hesitated just before setting her hand down.  Oghren met her halfway, however, and grasped her hand fiercely as he tried to sniff back tears.

"But at least it ends here," Caridin said.  "I thank you for standing with me, stranger.  The Anvil waits there for you to shatter it."

Wynne approached, Zevran still leaning on her a bit.  "It was good to meet you, Paragon," she said to Caridin.  "I intend to ensure that your warnings about golems are heard by the Circle of Magi."

Caridin nodded his gratitude to her, then turned back to Lornwen.  "Is there any boon I can grant you for your aid?  A final favor before I am freed from my burden?"

Lornwen squeezed Oghren's armored shoulder.  "Oghren?" she asked gently.  "You... lost Branka to this.  What do you want?"

He laughed dryly.  "Don't suppose you can bring Branka back?  Maybe make her a golem, like you?"

Caridin shook his head.  "I would not do such a thing to her even if I could."

Oghren nodded brusquely.  "Somehow I didn't think so.  Then I don't want anything that would remind me of... this."  Clearing his throat, he stood and turned away from the body of his wife.  "Best it's just done.  There... is still the matter of the election."  He looked up at Lornwen.  "I mean... we still need a Paragon to get the Assembly's support, right?"

"For the aid you've given me, I shall put hammer to steel one last time, and give you a crown for the king of your choice."

Watching Caridin smith was incredible, and Lornwen found herself unable to look away.  (Except briefly when Zevran came up and snaked his arms around her middle, and she turned to kiss him as she held him tightly, as if afraid to let go of him again.)  Finally, Caridin came back from the Anvil bearing a crown more radiant than Lornwen had ever seen.

"There," he said, passing it to her.  "It is done.  Give it to whom you will.  I do not wish to hear their names, nor anything more of them.  I have already lived far beyond my time.  I have no place here."

Lornwen took Caridin's massive hand in her own.  "I will destroy the Anvil, as agreed."

With more delicacy that he appeared capable, he squeezed her hand in gratitude.  "You have my eternal thanks, stranger."  Drawing away, he moved to the cliff's edge, then looked back to her.  "Atrast nal tunsha... may you always find your way in the dark."

Lornwen's throat tightened, but her eyes remained dry as she witnessed Caridin let himself fall from the height into the lava below.  She watched as his steel form sank into the fire, the lights of his eyes finally extinguishing, his soul finally returned to the Stone.

After a long moment, Lornwen turned away from the ledge and approached the Anvil, picking up Caridin's hammer.  With the mightiest swing she could manage, she shattered the Anvil, upholding her promise.  "Let's get back to the city," she said hollowlly to her companions, the hammer falling from her grasp.

The trek back to Orzammar was mercifully free of incident.  It seemed the path they'd cut on their way in remained clear for their way out.  At first, when they emerged, only the regular guard was there at the gates, but word in Orzammar spread quickly, and soon a small crowd had formed.  Head and shoulders above the dwarves, Alistair pushed his way to the front.  "Lornwen, Wynne, Zevran!  We were about to despair, you were down for so long!"

Wordlessly, Lornwen seized him in a tight hug and buried her face in his chest, finally freely crying all of the tears she had held back during the mission.

Awkwardly, Alistair returned the embrace, unsure whether to hold her or stroke her hair.  "I- er- what happened down there?"

"Too much," Zevran said only, rubbing Lornwen's back.

Wynne squeezed Alistair's shoulder.  "We'll tell you the whole story at camp.  Right now, I think we all need full pints of good ale."

Lornwen sniffed, emerging and wiping her face.  "Ale.  Yes.  Then let's settle an election and get out of these gods forsaken caves."


End file.
